NY: DNA EVIDENCE EXONERATES NEW YORK CITY MAN FOR 1985 SEX ASSAULT

After spending a full 25-year sentence in prison for a crime he did not commit, a Bronx, New York, man was exonerated by the first prosecutorial conviction review unit on the East Coast.

Rafael Ruiz was convicted in 1985 for sexually assaulting a woman in East Harlem. Ruiz, then 25, was sentenced to 8 1/3 to 25 years in prison and was released on parole in 2009 after serving the entire stint.

Now, at the age of 60, Ruiz had his felony conviction wiped off his criminal record after newly tested DNA from the victim’s sex assault kit found by the Innocence Project and the Manhattan District Attorney Office’s Conviction Integrity Program excluded him from the case. read more